Job Title:  Plant Director

Abaco Systems is a global leader in modular, high performance, open architecture, standards-based rugged embedded computing for the most demanding applications in defense and industry. Our products and solutions are found in high-profile military/aerospace sea, land and air programs, plus commercial and industrial organizations in which rugged reliability is mission critical.

The Plant Director is responsible for the leadership, guidance and direction of the Abaco Huntsville facility. This position requires planning, directing and coordinating the execution of production at a strategic level in the manufacturing and repair shops and will also be responsible for formulating policies, managing daily operational activities, and coordinating the use of materials and human resources toward a goal of maximum productivity.  The Plant Director will also be an active partner in Abaco’s Operational Excellence team to ensure we maintain best in class operations.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Safety as Culture:  Ensuring a Safe Operating Environment, and actively participating and outlining requirements for Safety Training.
• Quality Focus:  Abaco’s reputation for ruggedized components is a core of our product portfolio, and the Plant Director is responsible for leading our Quality Organization, ensuring compliance to standards, and participating on Kaizen activity focused on further quality improvement.
• Delivery Performance: Ensure that the organization is structured and has the talent, resources and organizational capability to meet customer quality, technical, and delivery expectations for product and desired customer turn-around times for repairs.
• Cost Performance: Establish strategies, objectives, capital requirements, material and labor requirements and budgets to support customer requirements and meet budget commitments.
• Manage and control expenses in accordance with approved budget.
• Meet or exceed measured objectives in sales, profit, turn-around time, employee/facility effectiveness and employee safety.
• Participate in the development and implementation of Abaco business strategy and demonstrate a readiness to support business objectives.
• Drive and support the overall continuous improvement initiatives within the facility; establishing metrics, measurements and tools to improve efficiency, effectiveness and communication.
• Give feedback to leadership and HR on talent needs and organizational capabilities needed to achieve higher levels of production improvement.
• People management from hiring and staffing through progressive discipline.
• Development and cross-training of technical staff and support groups.
• Coordinate and present performance reports to customers.
• Other duties as assigned.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or other technical discipline or business-related field is required.
• Proven record of success as a "hands on" operations management leader with at least 8-10 years of related experience.
• Production/manufacturing management in low volume / high mix (Engineered) product environment preferably in the electronics industry.
• Extensive knowledge and experience in successfully implementing and leading world class lean operations.  Prior work experience in working at organizations recognized as lean leading companies is a plus.

Qualifications:

• Strong analytical thinking, problem solving skills and communications skills (both written and oral) with attention to detail.
• Proven ability to successfully handle multiple projects and meet critical deadlines.
• Must be a team player with excellent interpersonal skills and a commitment to relationship-building, both internally and externally.
• Must be self-directed and can work well under pressure, multi-task, and meet deadlines.
• Strong leadership, project management and organizational skills.
• From an operations perspective, exposure to continuous improvement best practices, such as lean manufacturing and JIT is necessary in order to achieve operational excellence.
• Strong customer relations skills.
• Knowledge of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, SAP or other related business software.

Abaco is a Department of Defense (DoD) supplier and as such employees may work with or be exposed to export-controlled information and / or information that has been designated as classified information.